1. Description of the Related Art
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for representing depth image-based 3-dimensional (3D) objects, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for representing 3-dimensional (3D) objects using depth image, for computer graphics and animation, called depth image-based representations (DIBR), that has been adopted into MPEG-4 Animation Framework eXtension (AFX).
2. Description of the Related Art
Since the beginning of research on 3-Dimensional (3D) graphics, it is the ultimate goal of researchers to synthesize realistic graphic scene like a real image. Therefore, researches on traditional rendering technologies using polygonal models have been carried out and as a result, modeling and rendering technologies have been developed enough to provide very realistic 3D environments. However, the process for generating a complicated model needs a lot of efforts by experts and takes much time. Also, a realistic and complicated environment needs a huge amount of information and causes to lower efficiency in storage and transmission.
Currently, polygonal models are typically used for 3D object representation in computer graphics. An arbitrary shape can be substantially represented by sets of color polygons, that is, triangles. Greatly advanced software algorithms and development of graphic hardware make it possible to visualize complex objects and scenes as considerably realistic still and moving image polygonal models.
However, search for alternative 3D representations has been very active during the last decade. Main reasons for this include the difficulty of constructing polygonal models for real-world objects as well as the rendering complexity and unsatisfactory quality for producing a truly photo-realistic scene.
Demanding applications require enormous amount of polygons; for example, detailed model of a human body contains several million triangles, which are not easy to handle. Although recent progress in range-finding techniques, such as laser range scanner, allows us to acquire dense range data with tolerable error, it is still very expensive and also very difficult to obtain seamlessly complete polygonal model of the whole object. On the other hand, rendering algorithms to obtain photo-realistic quality are computationally complex and thus far from the real-time rendering.